HYDERABAD, Sept 26: The Hyderabad circuit bench of the Sindh High Court on Wednesday issued notices to the secretary of agriculture, director of administration of the Sindh Seed Corporation (SSC) and the SSC’s deputy director of finance to file comments on a constitutional petition lodged by an SSC deputy director of marketing, Mohammad Roshan Soomro.

The petitioner said that when he was deputy director one Ashfaq Ahmed Qazi, a grower of Khipro, visited him at the head office with a request for supply of wheat seed on Nov 11, 2000.

He asked the plant manager, Mah-kamuddin Kalwar, on telephone to dispatch wheat seed to the SSC sale point in Khipro so that Kazi could lift the required quantity after making full payment.

The in-charge of Khipro sale pint was instructed that he would supply whatever quantity was demanded by the grower after receiving payment in full.

The sale point, however, supplied seed directly to the grower at the behest of plant manager contrary to the petitioner’s instructions.

He said that the director of administration issued a letter to the petitioner, directing him to pursue the matter with the grower to recover cost of seed amounting to Rs154,000 within a month failing which he would have to pay the amount.

The petitioner submitted a report to the director of administration in compliance with his direction and he tried his level best to recover the amount but he could not contact him the grower.He argued in his report that action should be taken against concerned authorities who were involved in delivering seed without getting full payment. Therefore, the decision to recover of 40 per cent cost from him was unjustified, illegal, unfair and against principles of natural justice, he stressed.

He said that he submitted an application to the managing director of SSC on July 7, 2003 to hold an impartial inquiry into the matter. The managing director conducted a thorough inquiry and after hearing all concerned officers held the plant manager responsible for wrong dispatch and ordered 100 per cent recovery from him.

Mr Kalwar filed an appeal with the service tribunal which was not properly pleaded by SSC with the result that the tribunal decided to get 30 per cent of the embezzled amount from Kalwar.

The respondent director of administration misinterpreted the judgement and issued a letter to the petitioner directing him to deposit 40 per cent cost of embezzled seed amounting to Rs61,600. In reply, the petitioner submitted an application explaining factual position and requested withdrawal of the letter.

He filed an appeal before the secretary of agriculture, who verbally rejected his appeal saying that the recovery would be effected and accordingly the SSC deducted the amount from his gratuity.

The petitioner prayed the court to declare orders of secretary agriculture dated Jan 25, 2007 and director administration as illegal and direct them to pay back Rs61,600 to the petitioner deducted from his gratuity.